Pharmacy Pick-Up

I  stepped up to the outdoor pharmacy window at our Kroger grocery store to pick up my prescriptions. The system outside was not equipped with one of those keypads where you swipe your Kroger Rewards card or type your phone number in to receive your purchase credits. 

The pharmacy technician was a young woman in her early 20's and appeared to be new at the job. We had a little friendly cashier-to-customer banter where I told her I had a daughter in college, and she told me she was taking classes at UC. 

We were at that moment where my technician was beginning to ring up my bill. All of a sudden, I realized I had no keypad outside to enter my phone number for my Rewards points. I interrupted her saying, "Wait! Do you want my phone number?" Seeing the stricken look on her face, I instantly realized how she had interpreted my request. Wide-eyed-and-horrified, she drew back in disgust and said, "No!" 

I quickly responded with, "No. No. No. It's not like that. You need my phone number for the Kroger Rewards credit." 

I'm 30 years older than she is, am straight, and have been happily married for 25 years, but I can't help feeling a little bit rejected by the whole thing. I thought I was at least kinda cute.

Camp Damp

I’ve spent a lifetime camping across the United States with my parents and sister, and I married a man who loves to camp. I’ve taken showers with spiders and have expertly dried off while standing on top of my shoes. I’ve blown out my hair with the wall mounted hand dryer. I’ve used earplugs to drown out the nighttime swells of katydids and the campers next door who keep breaking out into song and laughter. I have my ways of adjusting to all the major and minor inconveniences of camping, but camp damp is too much for me. It’s all I can think about. Camp damp!

I made up this phrase during our most recent 3-day camping weekend with my sister and brother-in-law. It’s this pervasive “cold sweat” that dews all over everything, soggying up all forms of paper and fabric. Camp damp! I repeated the phrase all weekend like a Polly who wanted a cracker. It’s the only part of camping I cannot abide.

My sister tells me I just need to embrace it and forget about it, but I can’t. Every 10 minutes I’m standing by the fire again to rotisserate and re-dry all my wet places. Nighttime is the worst. The sleeping bag’s once silky lining is now a wet skin. I’ve tried wrapping my sleeping bag in a plastic tablecloth hoping to seal in some freshness, but it too succumbs to camp damp.

I came home from this past weekend determined to solve this problem. I went to the computer to look up hydrophobic materials that naturally do not absorb water, and I found it - polyethylene terephthalate.  It comes in various thicknesses and goes by the common name of polar fleece. My solution to camp damp. On my next camping trip, I’m simply going to swaddle in fleece. The only problem is that it’s terribly flammable, so my days of rotating on the spit are over.

Man Soap

I don’t like the way women smell. It’s all flowery and fruity and high pitched perfumey. I like the way men smell - with their low note baritone fragrances of woods and water and wonderful. My man is gone all day, and by the time I see him (I mean smell him) in the evening, most of the woods and water and wonderful have blown off of him.

Since I enjoy male scents so much, I decided I should stop waiting to run into manly smells and simply lather myself in them so they’re with me all day. I’m using an Old Spice High Endurance deodorant that’s simply yummy. I found a hand soap in a woodsy green bottle called Stress Relief Eucalyptus Spearmint. It smells not only like a man but a rich man! Rich men wear scents that have both high and low notes. I guess they can afford to smell a bit girly - and they seem to enjoy girly things like shoes, clothes and jewelry. I don’t want to be married to a rich man, and their smell makes me weary eventually, but I sure do enjoy the occasional whiff of one.